Friday, October 26, 2012

History is serious business, and historians are serious people. Sometimes. A question made the rounds on the history blogosphere a few months ago, eliciting responses not only from the general public but also from a number of professional historians: suppose we brought all of the Presidents of the United States back to life, issued each man with a knife, and ordered them to fight to the death in an arena. Who would win? The consensus seems that it would come down to a fight between Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. For the initial thread see here, and see here for the Canadian blog which brought it to my attention.This got me thinking about unexplored historiographical expanses, and brought to my mind an equally serious question: in a mass knife fight between every governor of New France, who would win, and why? Actually, we might have to alter the terms of engagement of this colonial jeux de la faim. Indeed, while knives might do the trick in the down and dirty, populist world of American politics, the fact that most of the governors of New France were drawn from the old families of the noblesse d'épée surely allows them the dignity of fighting with swords.

A late nineteenth century imagining of seventeenth century
combat. From François Guizot's Histoire de France (1875).
For our illustrative purposes, this will do the trick.

The fight might be a good one, for the majority of these nobles "of the sword" had a military background. Most entered the army at a very young age, and by the time they crossed the Atlantic were tested veterans of Louis XIII and XIV's wars. Some acquired their experience fighting with the army in the Netherlands, but several also fought in more exotic climes. Charles de Huault de Montmagny, a knight of the Order of Malta and New France's first governor (Champlain is excused from the fight, folks, as he never bore the title), fought against the Turks and North African pirates through the 1620s and early 1630s. Pierre du Bois d'Avaugour for his part spent some forty years in the army before his short stint as governor, and within a year of his return would go on dying in battle against the Turks along the Hungarian frontier. Jacques-René de Brisay, marquis de Denonville, is another who campaigned both in the Netherlands and against the pirates of North Africa through the 1660s and 1670s. Then there are those, particularly later governors, who had a background not with the army, but rather with the navy. Charles de Beauharnois served at sea through the Wars of the League of Augsburg and Spanish Succession and appears to have been involved in quite a bit of close quarters fighting. Same with Jacques-Pierre de Taffanel, marquis de la Jonquière, who began his naval career at the helm of modest fireships, sloops and feluccas. Swashbuckling!

Military or naval experience, to be sure, did not entail actual experience in combat, nevermind of the types of bloody melees we're talking about here. Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal entered the troupes de la marine at the age of ten, but being the son of a governor of New France he was promoted through the ranks rapidly and without any combat experience it seems. Add to that that he was already fifty-seven years old when he became governor in 1755, and that his health at the time wasn't the most solid. The portrait of him attributed to Donatien Nonotte, in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, shows a rather plump man. Let's just say that New France's last governor would not fare particularly well in our imaginary fight to the death.

Age must be factored into all of this more generally. Most governors were already well advanced in years at the time of their appointment. This was the case of all the men cited so far: Denonville was forty-three and Jonquière was sixty-one, but the rest were in their fiftees. It was also the case of Louis de Buade de Frontenac. He too had seen battle through the 1640s, but was already fifty when he arrived at Quebec. Add to that the fact that he had received a wound to his right arm during the siege of Orbitello in 1646. Scholars have noticed that his writing does not change very much thereafter, suggesting that it was only a slight wound, but still... And did I mention that by the late 1680s he was suffering from frequent attacks of gout, and that later in life he also suffered from asthma?

So a handful of governors might stand out merely because of their young age and youthful energy. Pierre de Voyer d'Argenson was thirty-three when he arrived in the colony to serve as governor in 1658. Having served a short stint in the king's guards, he's known to have personnally taken the field in pursuit of marauding Iroquois war parties. Another young and early governor was Louis d'Ailleboust de Coulonge, who would have been around thirty-six years old in 1648 when he set out on his first or two mandates as governor. He was an "engineer skilled in the profession of arms", though it's not clear what sort of actual fight-to-the-death experience this entails.

Then there is Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil (the other Vaudreuil's father). He was already sixty when at the time of his appointment, to be sure. But having read far too much Alexandre Dumas as a youth, I'm inclined to think that he might prevail. You see, before coming to New France Philippe served for fifteen years in the mousquetaires du roi. That's right: the musketeers. Having joined this elite corps of the French army in 1672, he likely served a campaign alongside the historical Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan, who had himself come out of retirement at the ripe age of sixty-two only to die at the siege of Maastricht in June of 1673.

So while we're imagining a mass swordfight between every governor of New France, it's shouldn't take a great deal of additional exertion of the mind to grow convinced that the old d'Artagnan naturally taught a trick or two to the young Vaudreuil. Right? Vaudreuil, in any case, fought through the Dutch wars of the 1670s with bravery, it is reported, and distinction. It was the courage he displayed at Valenciennes in 1677 and Ypres in 1678 that appears to have brought him the king's favour. Looking for promotion opportunities, he sailed for New France in 1687. During his early field commands against the Iroquois he displayed rather poor tactical judgement, and was arguably responsible for several near disasters. But who's to say that he was not a capable fighter. Between the fancy musketeer footwork and the blind rage he'll no doubt experience upon seeing his coddled son go down early in the fight, my money's on Vaudreuil the elder.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

In case any of you missed Tuesday's announcement by Minister James Moore, you might want to type "Canadian Museum of Civilization" and "Musée canadien des civilisations" in GoogleNews.

For now, I will allow elder blogsman Christopher Moore's optimism to wash over me. Perhaps some good can come out of this after all. It's a shame, though, that Canada Hall is being scrapped altogether. The immersive environments -- from the Basque ship and whaling station, to the mid-eighteenth century "New France" town gate and square, the Louisbourg inn, the farmhouse, workshops and hospital interiors -- were nothing short of magical. The post 1760 ones were not bad either, I guess. Museum staff have their work cut out for them.

Friday, October 12, 2012

On January 26th, 1636, Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Biré wed in the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Cougnes in La Rochelle. About 1650, with their small family in tow, the couple undertook the transatlantic voyage and settled in the vicinity of Quebec. The Roy children grew up in this new world, married and in turn had children of their own.

Flash forward three centuries and a half. The good people at Ancestry.com, who as modern day alchemists have made an art out of turning old records into massive corporate earnings, announced yesterday their discovery that Justin Bieber, Ryan Gosling, and Avril Lavigne all trace their ancestry to the Roy-Biré couple. Bieber, they observe, is 11th cousin once removed from Gosling, and 12th cousin from Lavigne. Bieber, as it turns out, also has among his ancestors Jacques Vezina and Marie Boisdon, which makes him 10th cousin three times removed from Céline Dion. Those of you whose teen-bopping hearts burn to know more will find the Roy-Biré lineages plotted-out here.

Ivan Moreno, who penned an Associated Press story cum publicity piece for Ancestry.com, speaks of the "Canadian dynasty of teenybopper pop and movie stardom". He also aludes to "superstar genes", though he goes on to cite a researcher at Ancestry.com to the effect that "she didn’t know" if these celebrity links were "sufficient to point to the existence of a superstar gene". If any irony was intended by either the reporter or the expert, I fear that it will have been lost on many of their readers. Beware of the hype! Let's label this particular kind as genealogical sensationalism or, perhaps, geneasensationalism. Clearly there is no special gene involved here, and the nature of the genealogical linkage is not as remarkable as some would have you believe.

As one sagacious web commentator wrote "News flash, we're all related, if you go back far enough you will find a common ancestor." This, I would stress, is particularly true in the case of the French Canadian population, which grew from a relatively small number of seventeenth and eighteenth-century immigrants. The bona fide historical demographers at the Programme de recherche en démographie historique have estimated this core foundational stock to about 10,000 individuals. This may sound like a lot, but it isn't. Over ten generations, every person has a potential 1024 ancestors (potential because there is often some overlap). No surprise, then, that linkages can be uncovered between distant cousins, celebrities and non-celebrities alike.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Lest my last post paint too bleak a picture of retirement, I thought I might add a more positive note. The name A.J.B. "John" Johnston will be familiar, I trust, to many of you. He served as staff historian at the Fortress of Louisbourg for over two decades, retirining, if I recall correctly, in 2000. He has been inspiringly prolific as a researcher and author in the field of eighteenth century French colonial history, with a special emphasis on the Maritimes, Louisbourg and the Acadians. He has published over a dozen books and hundred articles. But old historians never die. More than one has been known to turn to fiction.

In his first novel, Johnston imagines the early life of the dastardly Thomas Pichon (1700-1781). Born in Normandy, Pichon reached Louisbourg in 1751. There he served for a time as secretary to the governor, before being posted to Fort Beauséjour. Feeling underappreciated, it seems, he soon became friendly with the British officers across the river at Fort Lawrence. In 1754 Pichon turned his coat. He offered his services to these new friends and served as a spy for over a year, chanelling information about French activities to the enemy. After the capture of Fort Beauséjour in June of 1755, he crossed over to England where he was rewarded with a pension. In 1769 he moved to the Channel island of Jersey, where he died in 1781.

Johnston, long enthralled by the man who has been described in the Dictionary of Canadian Biographyas "one of the most intriguing figures in the early history of Canada" , has endeavoured to imagine young Pichon's early years in the Old Country. Readers first encounter Thomas as a precocious twelve-year old in the small town of Vire, Normandy, then follow his adolescent adventures and his rebellious nighttime flight to Paris where he takes up the job of a lowly office clerk, aspires to literature, and sets out on his path by moonlighting as a part-time spy for the police. I look forward to picking it up.